


a lonelier version of you

by helloearthlings



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Ambiguous/Open Ending, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Magic-Users
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-08-01
Packaged: 2018-12-09 14:51:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11671305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helloearthlings/pseuds/helloearthlings
Summary: Morgana couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen color. Judas didn’t believe in color. Judas didn’t believe in many things; connection, childhood, humanity, and naturally, magic.Judas was home to more than five thousand magical youths and yet couldn’t bring itself to believe in magic.





	a lonelier version of you

**Author's Note:**

> The whole time I was writing this, all I could think was this is not my brand, this is not my brand, this is not my brand. In my original idea for this, I was actually gonna have it be much longer and dramatic and have endgame Morgana/Gwen, but I liked the Merlin/Morgana too much to like, cancel it out later. I'm gonna write a separate, less dramatic Morgana/Gwen inspired by what was going to be the second half of this story. Probably a little less magical intrigue in that one, but I'll try my best.
> 
> Anyway, uhhh, enjoy some Mergana? This is my first time seriously writing them as more than a side/non-endgame pairing, so tell me how I did!

Grey. White. Black. Grey.

Morgana couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen color. Judas didn’t believe in color. Judas didn’t believe in many things; connection, childhood, humanity, and naturally, magic.

Judas was home to more than five thousand magical youths under the age of twenty-three and yet couldn’t bring itself to believe in magic.

Morgana remembered coming to Judas when she was sixteen – it hadn’t been her choice, but then again, most born with magic had the freedom of choice taken away from them long before sixteen. Morgana should count herself lucky she managed to live in the world for that long.

She might’ve made it longer if she hadn’t accidentally set the curtains on fire in her English class, but there had been a greasy and leering boy who grabbed her ass, and Morgana’s temper had finally won out over her calm control.

The school hadn’t wanted to send her to Judas; they were willing to forget it ever happened and move forward. They were run by pro-magic hippies, her father had shaken with anger, spit flying in Morgana’s face as he confronted her. It was him who insisted she go to Judas. Uther Pendragon, head of the board of Magical Grievances, couldn’t bear to have a daughter with magic.

Morgana knew he believed that Judas wasn’t enough. She knew that if his humanity slipped away, just a bit, he would have had her killed.

Sometimes, lying in bed, and staring at the grey and white striped ceiling, a dozen other girls with magic in their veins in the beds next to her, she wished he had had the balls to do it instead of confine her to lifetime of imprisonment.

At twenty-three, she would go to Gargantuan. That much was abundantly clear. She had too much magic to be allowed out in the world after her stay at Judas; they’d never let her out, and even if they did, Uther would probably insist.

Gargantuan didn’t treat their residents as kindly as Judas did. Judas believed in ignoring magic, sapping it out of you like energy, in the hope that you could be reformed. Gargantuan, according to the tall tales that the girls whispered to one another at night, believed in beating the magic out until it left or you died.

Morgana knew that she would die first; that her magic was too strong to fold to a beating.

She would die before she turned thirty. She would be _happy_ to die before she turned thirty.

“Why?” Merlin had asked her, the first time she told him that, face crinkling in shock. “I mean, whatever, death is better than conforming, I get that, but there’s got to be another way. A third option.”

“Sorcerers don’t _have_ options,” Morgana had told him bitingly. “We aren’t given the freedom of choice.”

“Pick that up in a pro-magic pamphlet?” Merlin raised a snarky eyebrow at her and laughed.

Morgana had forgotten what laughter sounded like until she met Merlin.

Merlin was nineteen to Morgana’s twenty the first time they met, but he’d been in Judas far longer, since he was thirteen, but in the East Wing instead of the North.

Morgana had been transferred to the East Wing when she picked a fight with Sefa over the tater tots in the cafeteria. Granted, it had been a rather stupid thing to punch her over, but Morgana hadn’t yet learned to reign in her temper, and three years of Judas slowly draining away her will to live had caused a snap or two over time.

It ended up being the most effective temper tantrum she’d ever thrown.

“Come on, it’s all a part of the great and mighty struggle for liberation,” Merlin said over lunch one day, his hands flying to make his point. “Someday, sorcerers of the future will look back on us now and think _they struggled for me_. Isn’t that something to fight for?”

“You’re such a soppy optimist,” Morgana told him, hiding a smile. She couldn’t let him know that she loved the way he believed, in a way no one else she’d ever met had. Not even Judas could drain Merlin away.

“I’m a closet cynic,” Merlin said with a wink, stabbing his salad voraciously with his fork. It was a plastic fork, of course; Judas would never give them something to use as a weapon. “But if I act like I’m happy, that this place hasn’t taken anything from me, then maybe it won’t. You know?”

“No,” Morgana said with a laugh. She’d been sixteen the last time she laughed. “You’re just an odd duck who philosophizes too much.”

“Never said I wasn’t,” Merlin grinned broadly.

Morgana hadn’t made a friend at Judas before Merlin, too wrapped up in her own misery. But when she and Merlin collided, Merlin seemed to make the decision that she was worth pursuing into his world of optimism and rainbows and hope for the future, and worked tirelessly to bring her there every day.

Judas was meant to drain you; its walls did more than just deflect magic or keep it contained. It’s walls permeated your body; it took everything that made a person human and minimized it, diminished it until there was nothing yet.

Judas sucked the hope out of your very soul. Morgana thought it had drained everything that was good about her years ago.

But Merlin could make her laugh.

They started fucking when Morgana decided to go to his bedside one night; Judas only had teachers, not guards. It was not a prison; this was made abundantly clear to parents scared of their magical children. No, no, they could send their children here like a magical boarding school, one where they couldn’t hurt anyone or anything.

The teachers performed guard-like duties, especially with the sectors of Judas that housed people over the age of eighteen – Judas used to stop admissions for those over age, but legislation had passed in the last five years from activists who wanted to bide more time before Gargantuan became a reality.

Gargantuan was undeniably a prison, just one with higher death tolls than any other.

Guards weren’t exactly necessary either – if no one had the energy to go, who would? Up until recently, it hadn’t been Morgana.

But Merlin inspired something in her, with his easy nature, his hope and joy, his ability to make the best of anything.

She was aware the other boys were looking at her as she slid next to Merlin in his tiny, twin-size bed, but she didn’t care.

“Hey,” Merlin whispered, his voice scratchy with sleep, sliding over to make room for her, forever going with the flow, open to everything that could happen next. “What’s up?”

“I wanted to see you,” Morgana whispered back, a little giddy, an emotion she had forgotten.

“Okay,” Merlin bit his lip and turned to grin at her, his face bathed in darkness and yet, Morgana could see the light in it.

She kissed him for the first time then, in the darkness of the room, the brightness of the kiss making up for it.

“Watch this,” Merlin whispered when he pulled away, and suddenly the room was filled with a light buzzing sound. Morgana frowned, looking around at the other beds, at the boys sleeping in them who somehow seemed further away now.

“What –?”

“No one can see or hear us,” Merlin said with a bright and nervous smile. “Nobody at all.”

Morgana stared. No one could perform magic within Judas’s walls. If they could, it would have to be in the first few days, before Judas had time to unleash its poison.

Merlin had been here for _seven years._

“How did you…?” Morgana searched his face for an answer, and leaned up to kiss him again, and again, and again.

“I can’t do anything too complicated,” Merlin explained as he started undoing the buttons of Morgana’s shirt clumsily yet quickly. “But Judas doesn’t – doesn’t affect me like it does other people. I’m still…me. If I put my mind to something, I can do it.”

“You’re brilliant,” Morgana gasped out as Merlin’s teeth scraped against her neck, messy and the realest thing she’d ever felt before. “Oh, God, you’re brilliant. I knew there was something different about you…”

Merlin stopped kissing her, hovering above her with an open and vulnerable smile. “There’s something different about you, too, Morgana. You’re still – _angry.”_

Morgana snuck back to his bed every night.

“I miss my mum,” Merlin told her a few months later as Morgana lay on his chest, eyes drooping, sleep coming any moment. “That’s the first thing I would do if I got out – go find her.”

“She didn’t…send you here?” Morgana asked hesitantly, thinking of Uther.

“God no,” Merlin said, a hand reaching up to brush back Morgana’s hair. “I’ve had magic since the day I was born – there was no hiding it. She kept me safe, protected me. It was…well, it was a neighbor who saw me. I don’t blame her for telling the authorities – she didn’t know any better. She didn’t want me to go…go here. But then she got legal counsel from Agravaine du Bois who told her to prosecute, so…”

Morgana stilled. “That’s my uncle,” she said softly after a moment. “Uther Pendragon is my father. He’s the one who sent me here.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Merlin said, and lifted her chin up to kiss her lightly. “I…I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

“I’d go and see my brother,” Morgana pulled away from him, staring at his chest instead of his eyes. “Arthur. I never got to say goodbye to him before Uther sent me here. I don’t even know if he knows where I am, if I have magic. But I would want to see him again. Even if he hates me…he’s my baby brother.”

“Is he old enough to have his own opinions? Outside of your father’s?” Merlin asked, and Morgana held in a laugh. A real one.

“He’s twenty,” Morgana said with a giggle, biting her lip. “My twin. Ten minutes younger.”

“ _Baby_ brother,” Merlin snorted, making a face at her. “You’re so dramatic.”

“Do you really think we might get out of here someday?” Morgana asked, heart thrumming. Merlin’s ever-persistent optimism had to have some limit, didn’t it?

“I have no idea,” Merlin said, and for the first time Morgana remembered, he sounded a little lost. “But if I stop believing there’s a chance, then I’ll just become another automaton. Another lifeless zombie in this awful place, who will probably get killed before I even make it to Gargantuan.”

“Judas won’t kill you,” Morgana found Merlin’s hand to squeeze it. “That’s the whole point of Judas – they don’t kill kids.”

“But when I’m twenty-three and they’re ready to make the transfer?” Merlin’s voice became heavy. “They might decide that it would be more humanitarian of them to kill me before we get there. I’m too powerful for them to chance it.”

They two them laid there in silence for a moment before Morgana said “I think that the second I get away from these walls, I’ll be too angry to think straight and I’ll probably murder some of them before they can murder me. So we’ll all die in a blaze of glory.”

Merlin breathed a laugh out through his nose, recognizing the joke, yet Morgana also thought that he probably recognized the seriousness behind it as well.

“You’re angry enough to do that now,” Merlin said affectionately. Morgana wondered if he was right.

“I think you’re the only person,” Morgana said hesitantly after a moment. “Who will ever…ever _understand_ me. You know? I mean, say I survive past twenty-three. Say I make it out of here and get to be a part of the world again. No one there will be able to relate or understand what magic is, what Judas is, what this world is. You and I…we’re the same. I mean, I’m a temper tantrum away from killing someone and all you think about is the generations beyond us living another day, but we’re still the same.”

Merlin smiled gently down at her. “You’re right. I’m glad I knew you, Morgana. I’m glad I know you. Maybe this hellhole is worth it – I mean, it brought us together.”

“Soppy optimist,” Morgana accused gently.

“Closet optimist,” Merlin accused right back.

She kissed him, glad to know him, even if just for this moment.


End file.
